Big 4 Frustration As Nielsen TV Ratings Delayed Again Due To Power Outage

EXCLUSIVE: After last night’s The Bachelor finale, we know who Nick Viall’s new love is, but we don’t know how well the Season 21 ender of the ABC reality romance show did in the ratings. And neither do ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, the CW — or Nielsen.

An early Sunday morning power outage at the data company’s Oldsmar, FL facility continues to kneecap reporting of viewership and adults 18-49 demographic numbers for the Big 4 and the CW for a third day in a row. The lack of those fast affiliates and more is frustrating the nets. Right now, they have with no indication how big shows like Monday’s The Bachelor and NBC’s The Voice, Sunday’s NCIS: LA and the March 11 Saturday Night Live did, nor how cable blockbusters likeThe Walking Deadfared.

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“Nielsen continues to work with the local electric company and our technology teams to resolve issues caused by the Saturday March 11th power outage,” the company said in an email sent out to network clients this morning. “At this time we do not have any additional details to share regarding application availability or data delivery schedules for the services impacted.”

Among the services effected include “Fast Affiliates data for Saturday March 11th, Sunday March 12th and Monday March 13th,” Nielsen said.

“Nielsen just gave a lot of us new ammunition as to why we need a new method of gathering the metrics for prime,” one Big 4 exec growled to Deadline this morning. “It’s not unusual around daylight savings to see a bit of delay in the numbers, but this has gone far beyond that.”

“We are working in the dark here,” another net executive said Tuesday with a combo of annoyance and irony. Noted another cable insider to Deadline: “Nielsen is just lucky the snow and weather on the East Coast is distracting a lot of people here from the numbers, but that won’t last long,”

An update from Nielsen is expected sometime in the next hour or so, but broadcasters aren’t holding their breath that the situation will be fixed quickly.